Congratulations to Pete Alonso of the Baltimore Orioles on hitting your 300th career home run at Citi Field. Please go hit No. 301 somewhere else.
Pete’s having gone somewhere else is what got us into this particular mess, the one in which a 3-2 Met lead in the top of the ninth inning became a tie game en route to a 7-5 eleven-inning Met loss Tuesday night at home. That’s home, as in the physical home of the New York Mets and the forever spiritual home of the Polar Bear. I came into this series hoping we’d see No. 300 (two of them, including Francisco Lindor’s as yet unseen double-oh longball) take flight in Flushing. As the series went on, I clarified my hope and pulled for Pete to pick a relatively inconsequential spot to go deep and therefore wound shallow. Like not in the ninth inning with a game in the balance.
Alonso had his own ideas. So did a vocal portion of the crowd that not only stood to applaud Pete’s milestone, which I could see myself doing in that “ya gotta hand it to the guy” manner, but kept it up until Pete was convinced to take a curtain call. He knew how to do that in this ballpark. Doing it in an Orioles uniform didn’t make it any less natural from his perspective — nor to those fans who called for him to emerge from behind the third base dugout curtain.
This was probably a bit of a drag for Kodai Senga, who was trying to protect the lead and for the first time in his tenure as closer pro tempore didn’t. Judging by the postgame questions directed at Senga, starter Sean Manaea, and manager Andy Green, the fans’ pro-Pete boomlet, gaining steam when it did, struck Met media as an aberrant reaction. In the moment, it didn’t seem all that odd to me. Pete is Pete. We are who we are. Pete gave us seven seasons, #LFGM, and the first 264 of those 300 home runs. The team he was facing was in the process of giving us an 82nd loss the night after it was mathematically eliminated from postseason consideration. We root for them to win every pitch and every swing, anyway, unless a special situation breaks in with a bulletin that interrupts our regularly scheduled programming.
“This just out: A Pete Alonso home run, headed for the stratosphere, or at least the facing of the second deck of Citi Field. He is currently rounding the bases to a rapturous reception despite no longer playing for the team that plays more games here than any other team does. The fans continue to swoon, as they wish for Alonso to acknowledge their approval of his 414-foot blast, and there he is, stepping back onto the field and offering a wave in return for their cheers. This has been a special report. We now resume our coverage of the Mets-Orioles game, tied at three with one out in the top of the ninth inning.”
Back to business from there, which was unfortunately the business of clinching a losing record for 2026. The ninth became the tenth, once Senga, to his credit, locked in and struck out his last two batters, and former Alonso Met teammates Rico Garcia and Josh Walker squelched a Met threat. The Orioles in the tenth scored one run when it appeared they were poised to score more. The Mets in the tenth scored one run when it appeared they could have scored two and made Alonso’s home run a footnote. Francisco Alvarez appeared all night to be overmatched by the challenge of hitting and catching.
Coby Mayo appeared in the eleventh as the reincarnation of Daylen Lile. Almost a year ago to the day, Lile, designated hitter for the Nationals, hit a ball to deep center at Citi that the Met center fielder, then Cedric Mullins, couldn’t corral, and it went for an eleventh-inning inside-the-park home run. This year, the Mid-Atlantic DH perpetrator played for a different team and hit it to a spot where a different midway flycatcher, A.J. Ewing, couldn’t quite make a play. Ewing fell down. The ball wound up surrounded by all three outfielders after it did its trickling, never a good omen for the defensive team. This was a home run that made no Mets fan swoon. It didn’t even leave the park.
Once all three Oriole runners, including Mayo, circled the bases, the Mets’ chances all but departed the premises, sort of like Alonso shortly after that September 2025 weekend versus Washington. At least this time there was no kick in the head to our Wild Card aspirations. The Mets rallied a tiny bit in the bottom of the eleventh Tuesday night and got the tying run to the plate, but not so it could step on the plate. The Mets lost their third in a row, still generating disappointment rather than apathy in the face of defeat, which I suppose represents a consolation prize of sorts.
Manaea — who was removed in the sixth despite pitching well for five-and-a-third, mostly because Green has watched Sean implode in too many sixths — tried to restrain his huffiness over being pulled and Pete being embraced in the face of impending Met doom. Sean’s been a mensch since he got here. He can be a little huffy if he needs to be. Alonso was soon seen outside the visitors’ clubhouse playing his usual role of Übermensch with the trio of Mets fans who returned his home run ball to him. He signed their jerseys. He gave them bats. He handed them beers. He promised to set them up with the royal Oriole treatment (“the whole nine yards”) if they want to come to Baltimore to see him play in his other home yard.
Pete never said anything to anybody that could be picked up by a microphone regarding how he sure showed those who chose not to keep him in a Met uniform. He wanted to win the game, he said. The Orioles are still pursuing a playoff spot. That’s what gets him going, he swore. He ends his public comments now with “Let’s Go O’s,” no F’s given. We didn’t hear from David Stearns. The fans’ chants calling for the POBO’s dismissal spoke for his part in this sidebar to a lost season. You can chant for Pete, and he’ll eventually homer. Shaking up the front office probably doesn’t happen as a result of the crowd demanding a reverse curtain call.
Shaking up the team in the wake of 2025’s shortfall didn’t work out swimmingly. The Polar Bear is splashing around making people happy in two cities. The POBO can point to isolated pockets of progress in Queens and signs eliciting optimism for the future. It’s not the same. Not yet. We’ll get back to valuing potential some other time.
Fan Appreciation Weekend is forthcoming. We’ll see who’s in the mood to appreciate who.
Objectively it sucks seeing an opposing player cheered so heartily and taking a curtain call at Citi Field (!). But fans are fans, not always logical, but how else can they get their message across? It’s totally understandable, though it still sucks. Also, hello? 1969? Orioles? I can’t wait for them to get out of town.
The vociferous reaction of Mets fans to Pete’s home run was in no way meant to disrespect the Mets players, but it was meant to echo the season-long angst, regret, rage and disgust that the Mets braintrust (not just Stearns but Cohen as well) saw fit to let an irreplaceable and universally beloved home-grown power hitter and RBI producer extraordinaire walk out the door for no good reason. Stearns will never shed the disgrace of this move and should find other employment if he can. As for Cohen, he of the $1.8 billion insider-trading fine, MLB should never have approved his ownership and I hope he moves on to casinos and other pursuits.
With the caveat that not all of Stearns’ moves have worked out terribly (trading Nimmo cleared the way for Benge/Ewing, Robert Jr. was decent enough when healthy, Diaz has been a dumpster fire for LA), everyone’s been rightfully irked by the way the front office treated Pete for his last 2+ seasons. They made it clear they didn’t want him because of defense/predicted aging/whatever and tried to replace him with an injured second baseman. This guy was the heart and soul of our team when he was here, and management let him walk without even a solid counteroffer. Pete has too much class to say this out loud, so the fans have said it for him the past two nights and they’ll say it again tonight. This is the our equivalent of renting the plane over Giants Stadium or MSG chanting for Eddie. Whether management is smart enough to take the lesson to heart is up to them.
Trading for three years of a player who would be retired if he wasn’t signed for $20+m per year is a disaster no matter how you try to twist it. I will give him credit for the bullpen this year, though I am 100% sure he won’t come close to replicating it this offseason, if there’s any money left to spend on it at all.
Is there anyone who understands the situation who did not expect this exact thing? Pete hits a home run – not just any home run but a very clutch home run and also, by the way a milestone home run in New York at Citi Field. Mets fans cheer Pete and jeer Stearns. As a professor of mine used to say, “As night follows the day,” this was destined to happen. And now it’s done. But a few words of caution:
1. The comments online about the fans’ behavior can go away, too, as well as discussions about who’s a “real Mets fan.” This is not a club with admission requirements. Anyone can join, and it doesn’t matter if you love Pete or hate Pete or think Stearns is a screwup. I suspect that most of those comments were from holier-than-thou fans of other teams who think the Mets and Mets fans are a target for ridicule and bullying. There is no gatekeeping here, physical or otherwise. If you say you’re a Mets fan, you’re a Mets fan. Period.
2. Mets fans should avoid judging other Mets fans.
3. People on the internet trying to stir up trouble by vaguely threatening a “civil war” and violence between Mets fans in the stands need to back right off.
3. I am glad Pete hit his 300th home run in Queens. But personally, while I would have cheered for that all day long, I have never booed anyone at any sporting event and I would not have chanted “Fire Stearns.” Why ruin a happy moment for Pete and Mets fans in that way? Only love for the Polar Bear was necessary in my opinion but hey, last I looked it was still a free country and fans can chant what they want to chant.
4. Mets players and Andy Green need to be very careful not to drive a wedge between themselves and the fans. I imagine it was, to say the least, disconcerting to hear an opposing player cheered in that manner at Citi Field, it was not directed at you. Pete is not the Enemy right now. He’s in that not-quite Met status of non-Met. When the O’s pull out of town tonight, we’re not going to start booing you or jeering at you. And please remember the cautionary tale of Javy Baez from a few years ago, unless you want to ticket on the first train out of town.
5. Mets fans no matter where they stand on the matter of Stearns need to give Francisco Lindor the same rapturous reaction they gave Pete. For me, he has earned that and more. And it will pull us back into plumb, as it were, after the very human reaction to being slightly disjointed and dizzy during the last few days.
6. Finally, the media should drop back a bit and stop judging Mets fans, Mets players, the Mets organization and Pete himself. Let the emotions cool down and the Mets finish the season and honor Howie Rose. I’m seriously thinking of not engaging with the final road trip games, as I think Howie’s final call of “Put it in be Books” might drop a fitting curtain on this season.
7. I wish Pete only the very best going forward, but I certainly hope he’s happy. Even our happy-go-lucky, LFGMing erstwhile first baseman seemed a bit stunned at the reaction he set off, but he also looked angry. The bat toss was a little too strong and although he acknowledged the fans with a curtain call, he looked a little bit like, well…a mad polar bear. He kept using the word “appreciate” as some kind of talisman, and I’m sure he does appreciate us, but I hope he’s happy knows, deep in his gut, that we appreciate him, too. And always will.
Well, that certainly is a lot of words.
You actually read it? :-)